


Memento Tua

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Martin is only mentioned but I wanted to tag him, Original Jurgen Leitner Book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 06:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21094670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: Statement of Carol Matthews, regarding a book she sold to A.Z. Fell, and her subsequent attempt on his life. Original statement given December 4th, 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.





	Memento Tua

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this like it was found during the first season, hence the mention of Sasha. If you're looking for fluff, this... might not be the place to find it

Statement of Carol Matthews, regarding a book she sold to A.Z. Fell, and her subsequent attempt on his life. Original statement given December 4th, 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

Statement begins.

[I’ve… never been much for reading. Had trouble learning when I was younger, you see. Something about the words just didn’t quite get through from my eyes to my brain. Mum used to say it was because I had such a thick skull. And now, struggling on a paragraph can make me feel like I’m back in Primary School and Mrs. Dalton is looming over me with a ruler. So… yeah. I don’t read much anymore.

When I found A.Z. Fell and Co., I was surprised at how comfortable I was there. Surrounded by books. Maybe it’s because all of them were so old, and the language so outdated, that anyone would have trouble getting through them. Not just me. I could stand there working my way through one page for ten minutes, and nobody would give me any odd looks.

And the owner, Mr. Fell, seemed to be infinitely patient. He couldn’t have been older than fifty, but one look at him and you could tell he’d been born to be a grandfather. Or somebody’s fuddy-duddy aunt. He always seemed to be wearing the same pale, scuffed suit that seemed so out of date I had to wonder where he’d bought it. His hair was white and oddly feathery, and he had a bit of a belly and he was almost always smiling. I’d once heard someone compare him to a well-worn couch. Soft. You could probably sit on him and he’d apologize to you.

He was polite to everyone, almost to a fault. But once I’d seen a customer get angry with him—he was denying that he had a book they wanted to buy, I think—and I’d stopped browsing to watch. In case he needed help, you know? I’d expected him to get flustered, but he didn’t. Actually, he went cold. Told the person to leave his bookshop and not to come back. And they had. Come to think of it, though, I never saw anyone actually buy any of his books. I have to wonder how he stayed in business.

The last time I visited his store—as a customer, at least—was early September. I’d put off stopping by, because I’d heard that the place had caught fire recently. Some people were telling me it burned down completely. And I didn’t want to go and see Mr. Fell’s old bookshop like that. I didn’t want to imagine him there in the street, watching the flames clawing at the inside of the windows, bits of his books floating down around him like blackened snow.

But when I finally worked up the courage to go look at the store, it seemed fine. The store front was the exact same shade of red it had always been, and the paint was still peeling in all the same places. The sign on the door was the same sign that had always been there, with Mr. Fell’s incomprehensible hours written out by hand. The bell clunked above the door in the exact same way it always had.

Something seemed off right away, though. The shop was mostly empty, and for a second I had to wonder whether I’d wandered in when it was closed. It sounded like something Mr. Fell would do, to forget to close and lock the shop. And Mr. Fell was there, sat at his desk on one side of the store. But there was someone else I’d never seen before, on the steps into the back of the shop. He was tall and spindly, wearing all black. And sunglasses. Indoors. The way he sat on the steps, he seemed like he might be completely made of elbows and knees.

Mr. Fell immediately got to his feet and said hello, calling me by name. I hadn’t realized he knew my name. I wasn’t paying him much attention, though. The man in the black was watching me, and I just stood watching him. I couldn’t make myself look away. I had the strangest feeling that if I looked away, I’d be… in danger, somehow. Like he might leap at me with a knife.

Mr. Fell looked back at him and told him to stop it. He sounded more exasperated than worried, as if his friend had just told a bad joke.

And just like that, the pressure lifted. I blinked, for what I realized had to be the first time in over a minute.

I got the distinct impression that, behind those sunglasses, Mr. Fell’s friend still hadn’t broken eye contact with me. But he broke into a grin and sat back, shifting his weight and tilting his head to one side. The movement was distinctly reptilian, and it immediately made me nervous again. But then he just levered himself to his feet, said he had to be going, anyway. And then he left. And Mr. Fell told me quickly not to worry about him, said he was really quite harmless, and asked me if I needed something. His eyes were on the box of books I was holding.

I guess I should stop and explain the books before I get to the rest. My aunt had died over the summer, you see, and my family had been going through her old things to decide what to keep, what to throw away, and what to sell, since she didn’t have any children to do it for her. While I was opening boxes in her attic, I’d come across a trunk full of books. Some of them I recognized—old classics, or older copies of the books she’d send me on Christmas because she thought I should read them. A lot of them didn’t have dust jackets anymore, if they’d ever had them.

This one hadn’t caught my attention at first. I’d just put it aside with the ones I didn’t know. But as I was going through them later, looking them up, I couldn’t find anything on this one. It was heavier than the rest. Maybe the hard cover was wood, instead of cardboard. There was no printing date on the inside. Not author or publishing house, either. No dedication page. And the title—_Memento Tua, _in gold leaf on the spine_—_brought up too many titles for me to sift through when I tried looking it up on the computer. There was no author listed.

So I tried reading it, to get a sense of what it was about. Sometimes you can find a book online by looking up the characters, you know? Or the plot? And I should have noticed how weird it was right away because I had no trouble reading it. Really, looking back, I’m not sure I _was _reading it. I’d just skim over a page and move right on to the next one. I don’t know if I can call that reading.

It was about a man cheating death. At first it was the classics, taken straight from the myth about Sisyphus. He chains up Death, and then when Death is released, the man has his daughter—not his wife, in this one—bury him wrong so he can return as a ghost and live out the rest of his life. At the end of the myth, he’s supposed to die and push a rock up a hill for the rest of eternity in the underworld. But in this one, he keeps going. As he gets older, he finds bitter herbs and potions to keep his body functioning. He learns how to steal life from pigs and horses and, eventually, his own daughter. At last, he resorts to running. Just running away from Death each time it comes for him.

Eventually he dies, of course. He gets too old and tired to keep running. And I’d expected the story to end there, but it doesn’t. The daughter is still alive at the end. But right as the book went into describing how she could still be alive, the writing stopped. Just, right in the middle of a sentence, towards the bottom of the page.

When I reached that point, I felt someone had swung a bat into my stomach. Then I got angry. How could they just stop there? What sort of stupid book would just end like that?

Can you imagine that? Angry at a book, for not ending. Not even at the writer, or the publisher. I was angry at the _book. _I practically threw it into the box with the rest of the books to sell. And I brought them to Mr. Fell first, in case any of them had any real value.

He had me put them on his desk, and he started to sift through them. He kept picking them up, and then shaking his head and making disappointed sounds. I quickly got tired of watching, so I started scanning the shelves to see if he had anything new.

I didn’t notice the silence until a few seconds after it started. Mr. Fell was holding _Memento Tua, _squinting at one of the pages. He wasn’t reading it—I could tell, because his eyes weren’t moving. He was just… staring at it intently, as if he was waiting for the words to start moving.

Then, without warning, he sat up and asked me how much I wanted for this one. I would say I was surprised, except I wasn’t. I’d figured he would want that one. So, I named a price. He went into the back room and came back out with the money, and then shoved the box with the rest of the books back into my arms. He was buried in the book again before I’d even left the shop. Didn’t say goodbye, or anything.

I probably wouldn’t have thought about the book again, except I dreamed about it that night. I was in some sort of black space. There was nothing in front of me, and when I reached out, my hands hit something… soft, and velvety. It gave under my fingertips, and I found I could push my hands into it until I was buried up to my shoulders. But I couldn’t go any farther than that. And besides, I got the idea that I was probably facing backwards in… whatever this dream was.

So I turned around, and there I saw Mr. Fell. He stood just out of arm’s reach, reading the book. I tried to get his attention, but he didn’t hear me. Or maybe I just didn’t make any sound. And I couldn’t move my feet, so I couldn’t touch him. I could only stand there and watch him read.

Minutes seemed to pass. Then hours. Days. Months. Every once in a while, Mr. Fell turned a page. I tried talking at him. Tried yelling, tried clapping, only to find my hands wouldn’t make any sound. And Mr. Fell read on.

My hands started to wrinkle. I watched my clothes begin to hang on my body. My fingers turned to knobby sticks and a freckle near my right thumb was covered by a liver spot. My fingernails were like claws. I was turning into an old crone. And still Mr. Fell stood and read, oblivious to me speeding towards my death, right behind him. My vision grew clouded with cataracts. My back hunched and bent. I hurt. God, it hurt so much to exist in that space.

What made it all worse was that Mr. Fell still looked the same. He was still wearing that pale suit and his hair was still that weird, feathery blond. The lines on his face stayed exactly where they always had been. He stood with the same straight spine. And still he did not take his eyes from the book, not even long enough to notice me.

And I understood. I was going to die here. And A.Z. Fell was just going to stand there with that book, reading it forever. _He _wasn’t going to die. No, he had the book. The obvious conclusion was that he wasn’t going to die, because he had the book.

I needed that book.

I woke shivering, sure I’d been asleep for decades. But when I turned on the light and checked my hands, they looked the same. Or—did they? My knuckles might have been a little bonier than they had been when I went to sleep. And right then, I knew I was already running out of time.

I decided to go and wait outside the shop until Mr. Fell went home, and then I’d break into the shop and steal the book. I didn’t want to hurt him. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

So, I drove there and parked on the street, and then I just… sat in my car and watched the shop, waiting for the lights to go out. Mr. Fell’s odd hours sometimes see him in there until early in the morning, but I was prepared to wait. I hadn’t brought anything to do; I doubt I’d have been able to take my eyes off the shop, anyway, as long as I knew he was in there with my book.

I sat there for… a long time. I have no idea whether I was there for longer than I thought, or if I was only there a few minutes. Time didn’t mean much to me, anyway, anymore.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. The lights were still on, but I hadn’t seen any movement inside. Maybe the old bastard had just left the lights on in his shop when he left. I was willing to take that risk.

So, I broke in. The doors were locked, and for a second all I could do was pull on them with increasing anger, and then I put my foot on one door and wrenched the other one open. It’s an in door, I remember. I must have torn it clean off its hinges. At least his stupid bell didn’t make much noise.

The shop was warm and I think it smelled like cocoa, but at the moment the heat was oppressive and the thought of drinking anything made me sick. I went to his desk and started picking up papers, but within seconds I was swiping them off the table, pulling books off the shelf.

And I heard a footstep behind me, and Mr. Fell said my name. He sounded shocked, like I was somehow in the wrong here, scattering the contents of the desk on the floor. I turned around and there was the book, right there in his hand.

I told him to give it to me. Said I wouldn’t hurt him if he just _gave me the book. _But Mr. Fell just stood there, his mouth open, clutching the thing to his chest. I didn’t have a weapon, but there were plenty of heavy things in the store. The antique chair. The old lamp on the desk. Hell, there had to be a fire extinguisher around here somewhere. I would do whatever it took to get him to let go of my book.

When I moved forward, he stepped back. I repeated my demand. But he shook his head and stepped back. Now there was a look of… of _determination _on his face. I hated that look. Why did _he _get to look like that? He told me he wasn’t going to give me the book, and that I should leave at once. The store was closed, he said.

I was too furious to even laugh. I asked him how much he wanted for the book, but he just told me that the book was not for sale. I offered a price and he still shook his head and asked me to leave again.

Finally, I lost my patience. I grabbed the first thing I spotted on the desk—an inkwell. The pen tipped out of it and the ink splattered on my hand, but I didn’t care. I launched myself at Mr. Fell, prepared to beat him to death with his own stupid antique inkwell, if what was what I had to do.

But Mr. Fell took one hand from the book and made a strange gesture—he raised his arm and then brought it down with his elbow bent, as if he were pulling the chain on an overhead light. I only heard him snap his fingers an instant before blackness crashed over me.

I woke lying sideways on the steps towards the back of the shop, with my wrists tied behind me. Someone was talking nearby, but it was a minute before I could focus enough to understand the voices. Two of them. As soon as I figured out which one was Mr. Fell’s, I lurched towards him and rolled down the steps, cracking my head on the floor. Mr. Fell swore—he always swore like an old woman, and usually it was sort of endearing but this time it made me even angrier.

When at last I could focus my eyes again, I found Mr. Fell stood nearby with the book in one arm, beside the spindly person in black who I’d seen the day I brought the book. The two of them were looking at me, now that I’d caught their attention. Mr. Fell had jumped backwards; I must have startled him. The other person hadn’t moved, though. He still just watched me, unblinking behind his sunglasses, with one hand in his pocket.

The spindly one might have made me nervous if I wasn’t so focused on Mr. Fell. With some effort, I got myself upright and I told him again to give me the book. And the spindly one _laughed. _Mr. Fell gave him a dark look, told him it wasn’t funny. He called him “Crowley.” And then he said they had to figure out a way to get rid of this book, because it was obviously doing something to me_._

The one called Crowley took the book and looked it over. He even sniffed it a couple times. I watched the whole inspection intently, waiting for a chance to—to do something. I don’t know what I was going to do. Tackle him, somehow get my hands free, and get away with the book.

But no such opening came. Crowley shrugged, handed it back to Mr. Fell, and said they could always just burn it.

I was furious. _Burn _it? No, he couldn’t _burn _it. Burning it would be as sure a death for me as a knife through my throat. I started struggling, trying to get to my feet, twisting my wrists even though I could feel the rope cutting into my hands, peeling off bits of skin. Something dripped off of my thumb, and only later would I realize it must have been blood.

Both of them stepped back. Mr. Fell looked horrified. But then he looked at the fireplace, where there was I fire I could have sworn hadn’t been there a moment ago. I would have noticed it if it had been there. I could feel the heat from where I was, which meant it was definitely hot enough to burn paper. It was hot enough to destroy my book.

Crowley told Mr. Fell to decide fast, and he called him “Angel,” as if that was his name. Or a pet name. And I remember hating it at the time. An _angel?_ To even consider burning the book, he had to be evil. He knew, he _knew _that burning that book would kill me. He _knew. _I could tell he knew by the look in his eyes. That sadness_, _that… _pity. _He pitied me. A.Z. Fell, the world’s softest old bookworm, who’d probably never seen any sort of hardship his whole cushy little life, looked at me and felt pity.

And he turned, shut his eyes, and dropped the book into the fireplace.

I screamed. Mr. Fell pulled his hands back quickly, as if afraid the book might explode, but it didn’t. The pages started to warp with heat, blackening and crumbling away. I was leaning forward as far as I could, watching the fire taking off pieces of the only thing that could have saved me.

I do know that it took a long time to burn. That whole time, I just sat and stared at it. Even after it had been reduced to a pile of ash.

Mr. Fell approached me carefully, asked me if I was all right. I felt a brief flare of hatred at the back of my mind, but it quickly died. I didn’t care about him anymore. Mr. Fell said he was going to untie me, and when I didn’t reply, he stepped behind me, out of sight. The ropes immediately fell away. I didn’t get up, though, so Mr. Fell got me to my feet and handed me a cup of cocoa. I didn’t know where it had come from. I just stood there, holding it, even though it was too hot and my hands were beginning to burn. Crowley said something about calling the police, but Mr. Fell just glared at him.

I guess I must have gone home at some point. I do remember leaving the shop. Mr. Fell waved and told me he hoped I felt better the next time he saw me.

I haven’t gone back to the shop. I don’t ever want to see A.Z. Fell again. Since all of this happened, I’ve thrown myself into my work, into hobbies, friends, doing anything I can to keep myself busy. Because if I’m idle for a single moment, I all of a sudden remember that, someday, I’m going to die. I’ll get old first, if I’m lucky. If you’d call it lucky. But eventually, I will die. And even if I never see him again, I am certain that I will never, ever forgive Mr. Fell for killing me.]

Statement ends.

We've attempted to contact Mrs. Matthews, but she appears to have moved shortly after giving her statement. The phone number she left has been disconnected. I doubt we will have much luck trying to reach her by mail, as she left no new address.

We also didn’t have much more luck with the bookstore she mentions in her statement. There is, in fact, an A.Z. Fell & Co. in Soho, but when Martin went to follow up with the owner, he returned two hours later having apparently been convinced to sit down for tea and a chat with Mr. Fell himself. He had completely forgotten to ask about the incident with Mrs. Matthews, and when he returned to the bookstore to try again, it was closed.

I’ve had Sasha look into Mr. Fell and his companion. The name “Crowley” is not much to go on, so we were unable to find any additional information on him. Mr. Fell, on the other hand, is well-documented. He is well-liked by other book dealers, if a little reclusive, though he rarely, if ever, sells. It’s a wonder the shop is still in business, especially considering it has been open since the mid-1800’s.

As a final note: during her research, Sasha located a photograph that was printed in the newspaper on the day the book shop opened. It shows the storefront, with the owner in front of it. Martin swears up and down that the Mr. Fell in the photograph looks exactly like the man he spoke to the other day. Family resemblance, I suppose.

End recording.


End file.
